Kegeree (kitchri) of the English type is composed of boiled rice, chopped hard-boiled egg, cold minced fish, and a lump of fresh butter: these are all tossed together in the frying-pan, flavoured with pepper, salt, and any minced garden herb such as cress, parsley, or marjoram, and served smoking hot.

If your cook be a good hand at puff-pastry, you may have worse fare at luncheon than petits pates of minced fish. The salpicon must be diluted with a rich sauce, and flavoured with whatever herb you like best. A far-off-thought of celery is not to be despised.

For the sauce in which you mean to re-cook fish, do not forget the bones and trimmings. A broth made of fish bones, with a few pepper corns, a sliced sweet onion, a bit of celery, a piece of lime peel, and an anchovy instead of salt, yields you a capital liquid which, when strained and worked up with melted butter and flour, generally produces a favourable impression.

The chief features to be noted in cooking hashes and Minces are much the same. Prepare the meat, after having carefully cut off all browned parts, as you may desire. Make the best broth yon can with the trimmings and bones; if you have any stock or gravy so much the better . thicken slightly, and flavour this according to your taste, and the materials that may be within your reach; strain it if necessary, add a dessert-spoonful of Madeira, or Marsala, and then warm up your meat. A mince, or a hash, should be allowed to stand in its sauce, with a gentle heat under the sauce-pan, for as long a time as can be allowed; when required for the table, increase the heal, and the moment the surface streams, the dish is ready for service.

"But," says the inquisitive disciple, "what are you to do if you have no bones, no gravy, and no stock ?" to him I reply as follows:- After having trimmed the meat to your fancy, take all the skin and ugly fragments that remain, and place them on a separate plate. Now, choose a Bombay onion, and mince it fine; place a good sized sauce-pan on the fire, put a pat of butter at the bottom of it (say a couple of ounces if you can spare as much) melt it, throw in the minced onion, fry it a light golden brown, add hot water now gradually, and throw in your scraps of meat, six pepper corns, a tea-spoonful of sugar, a tea-spoonful of salt, an anchovy, a piece of celery or its leave a carrot cut up, a bunch of curly parsley, the peel of a time, and a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, with a dessert-spoonful of vinegar, and let the contents of your sauce-pan simmer away until you are satisfied that you have extracted all the good to be got out of your several ingredients. Taste the broth as it is cooking, and correct any errors that may occur to you on the spot: when ready, strain it into a bowl, and skim off any fat that may rise.

Now, take another sauce-pan, and go through the usual process of thickening the broth; it will then be ready to receive the meat you desire to re-cook. A table-spoonful of Madeira, or Marsala; a little red currant jelly, and port-wine; some claret or burgundy if at hand; the pulp of a couple of tomatoes; or the strained yolks of two eggs, may be added to enrich your plat. The egg should be stirred in after the sauce-pan has been removed from the fire. The tomato gives a piquancy to all hashes, and minces, superior to that which can be procured by vinegars. Your selection of the wine that you use must depend, of course, upon the sort of meat you are cooking up.

In the case of a mince, remember, that when the meat has been passed through the machine, it must be diluted with a good thick sauce, in which it should be gently heated. Just before serving, it may be enriched with the raw yolks of a couple eggs - off the fire.

Having done this, you can diversify the methods of serving it as follows :-

1. Make a light omelette. "When all but ready to serve, spread your mince quickly on top of the omelette, toss the omelette in the pan lightly, and roll it off into the hot dish, enveloping the mince, and serve. This must not look like a "roly-poly" pudding. The omelette should not be made as stiff as a batter dumpling as Ramasamy loves to serve it. I will tell you how to make an omelette, properly in my next chapter.

2. Make a case of mashed potato, with high sides like a vol-au-vent case, and pour your mince into it.

3. Hollow out a number of small dinner rolls, butter them, and fry them a golden yellow : pour your mince into them, put a curl of fried bacon on the top of each, heat them in the oven for five minutes, and serve.

4. Make a number of little potato cases, and fill them in the same way : or if you have them, use the paper or china cases so universally used in England now.

5. Make some light puff-paste, form it into patties like oyster patty pastry, bake, fill them when ready with the mince, heat thoroughly, and serve.

6. Or, - cut the paste in circles three inches in diameter, place a dessert-spoonful of the mince in the centre of each, fold them over, pinch the edges all round, and fry a golden yellow in a bath of boiling fat.

7. Serve it plain, on a hot dish, garnished with sippets of fried bread, fried curls of bacon, and slices of lime, and put a poached egg or two on the top of it.

With reference to the above, remember, that toasted bread is not fried bread. Ramasamy is apt not to distinguish very carefully between the two; and whereas a crisp piece of fried bread is an agreeable adjunct to certain dishes; sodden, slightly smoked toast is inexpressibly disagreeable anywhere.

Bacon is valuable with all rechauffes of meat, and poached eggs are acceptable with hashes, and minces. Ham, I need scarcely say, if on hand, can be turned to the very best account, and tongue also, for that matter, to 3ist the flavouring of minces, croquettes, rissoles, et hoc genus omne.

Minced ham or tongue with minced corned beef, mashed up with some well boiled potatoes, hard boiled egg, and plenty of melted butter, and cooked in the fashion of "twice-laid," is a nice dish for a change at breakfast.

Maccaroni, and dustings of Parmesan (or any mild grated cheese) vary the monotony of warmed-up meats immensely, and go well with nearly every cold vegetable. Try this sometimes :- Having made a really good white i sauce, lay your trimmed fillets of cold fish, rabbit, or chicken, in a shallow pie-dish upon a layer of maccaroni, previously boiled till tender, pour the sauce over all, garnish with slices of tomato, dust over all a dressing of grated cheese, bake till lightly browned, and serve. The same recipe is practicable with brown meats, only make a brown sauce to start with, instead of a white.

Batter plays its part effectively amongst rechauffes. Any nice mince, bound with egg, rolled in slices of cooked bacon, then dipped in batter and fried in lots of fat, presents a toothsome kramousky. Fish fillets, dipped in the same way, and fried, are nice; and so are fillets of rabbit, or chicken.

If not overdone, thick slices of tender beef, or of mutton, may be dipped in melted butter, and broiled over a fast charcoal fire; or they may be marinaded (vide page 65), then bread-crumbed with nice stale crumbs, and fried a golden brown. These served with a macedoine de legumes, sauce soubise, horse radish sauce, tomato, or tartare are delicious; but the meat must be really juicy, or, in plainer terms, must have been slightly underdone in the first instance.

Apropos of batter, I must not forget to say, that pounded fish, incorporated with batter, that is to say, worked into it, and fried in seething fat by dropping the mixture into the pan by spoonfuls at a time, produces a dish of fritters most welcome at breakfast alone, or capital as a garnish for a larger dish of fish.

A remarkably nice little dish, also contrived with batter, is the crepe de poisson, or indeed of anvthing. The crepe is a pancake. Picture to yourself a nicely-made thin pancake :- spread it out upon a flat dish, and cut it into pieces two inches wide, and three inches long. Upon the surface of each piece, place a thin slice of bacon slightly smaller each way than the crepe, over the bacon put a table-spoonfnl of any nice mince, well worked with an egg or two, and a little cold sauce to give it moisture and cohesion : then roll up your crepes, put them on a buttered tin, brush them with a whipped egg, bread-crumb them, and bake brown in the oven.

Cold vegetables, such as cauliflowers, cabbage, Jerusalem artichokes, and vegetable marrows, may be mashed up with potatoes, or alone, diluted with melted butter, cream, or milk with the yolk of an egg strained into it, dusted over with grated cheese, and cooked au gratin. Mixed vegetables may be cut into dice and warmed up in white sauce a la macedoine de legumes, and cold peas, cauliflower, French beans, and cabbage, may be tossed in butter in a frying-pan, and served a la maitre d'hotel. Yon will find a good many recipes for the treatment of cooked vegetables in the chapters I have devoted to that especial subject.

No more useful present could well be given to a young lady commencing house-keeping than a set of silver, or silver-plated coquilles (scallop shells). Served in these inviting looking little dishes, a mince, or a rechauffe of vegetables, is worthy of a place at any table. A puree of artichoke, capped with finely-grated cheese, any cold fish, minced game, even the remains of a maccaroni au gratin, sent up in this tasty manner, seem ever so much nicer than in an ordinary way. The shells should be well buttered before operations are commenced, and the mince or chopped vegetable should be well diluted with sauce to keep it nice and moist. The surface should be sprinkled over with cheese or finely rasped crumbs. When quite hot, brown the crumbs with a hot iron salamander-fashion, and serve the shells tastily on a napkin. Crisply fried curly parsley may garnish them.